A Cycling Blog for the Rest of Us

Tag Archives: cycling

This year hasn’t seen the best of starts for TWT. Blogging aside, my bike has suffered from two breakdowns, both involving the derailleur, and last month my cycling plans were seriously hampered after my rear wheel was stolen. This then wasn’t replaced properly by my local bike shop and caused a further problem when I was in the middle of a ride on the Isle of Wight, then another when I was visiting the Cyclopark in Gravesend. All in all, its been a very stuttering start. After February’s floods, which affected the area where I live very badly, the weather hasn’t improved much and has alternated between snow (in March) to perennial downpour. It seems that every time I’ve managed to find time for a proper ride, the weather has conspired against me.

The View Outside TWTs House in February

With Mrs TWT due to give birth next month and with a two year old running around, I’m finding less time to devote to cycling so am planning some changes to my routine. The only real time I’m getting to ride is on my way to work, so I’m looking to change where I’m based, maybe with a view towards being able to cycle all the way in. At the moment, I live 30 miles from where I work – which is fine one-way, but I’m not sure I fancy working shifts and then cycling for 60 miles. I’ve also applied for a further Ride 2 Work certificate so I can get that road bike I was talking about at Christmas. I’ve settled on a Cannondale Synapse 5 after test-riding it at Evans’ Gatwick store and it was beautiful. It’s slightly over the certificate value maximum of £1000, but the difference is worth it. I’ve never ridden a road bike before that test run and have to say that it was an awesome experience. The bike was effortlessly smooth to ride, responsive to handle and comfortable for a beginner like me. More on that when it arrives.

I didn’t blog much over the Christmas or New Year period because of a distinct lack of cycling on my part. This was, in part, due to the appalling weather and flooding all around me, which would surely have put off even the most determined of cyclists! Despite having nearly three weeks off work, I managed barely a handful of rides – but at least what I did manage was more than my standard commute. So, in the past few weeks I have:

1) Invested in a Turbo Trainer during the sales. I picked up a Tacx Satori Pro with mat, DVD and stand for £149.99, down from almost £350 from Decathlon, far cheaper than even online stores had it. I’ll post about my experiences on this another time, but this was my way of stopping Mrs Tubby always whinging about me going out on my bike.

2) Joined a small Social Cycling group that I met on the GoSkyRide website, which meets up every Sunday. I completed my first ride with theme and (just) about managed to keep up on my clunky hybrid. Riding with others is so much more fun, and I aim to join a proper club later this year.

3) I decided to do the Sport Relief ride in London in March – just the 25mi course, though!

4) I cycled from Central London all the way out to the M25 boundary, taking in all the major tourist sites along the way.

5) I cancelled my Sky Sports subscription owing to wall-to-wall darts coverage, football and a compete lack of cycling coverage, despite Sky sponsoring one of the strongest pro teams in the world! Ironically, just as I did that! they’ve started covering the Tour Down Under…

Today, yet another cyclist – Belgian rider Jonathan Breyne of UCI Continental Pro team Crelan-Euphony – has tested positive for the banned substance, Clenbuterol, following his ride at the Japan Cup in October 2013. This follows hot on the heels Michael Rogers’ positive test (pictured) for the same substance earlier this week, following his victory at the same event. Both riders had previously been racing in China the week before. Coincidence?

I’m no chemist, so much of the information I’ve pulled together here is from secondary sources.

Clenbuterol’s main legitimate use is as a prescription drug for those with severe breathing difficulties. It is a stimulant and increases aerobic capacity; it doesn’t take much to understand why it is a banned substance for all sports around the world. The now-notorious EPO does much the same thing. It also makes the body burn fat faster and more efficiently, which has led to it being used as a weight-loss drug by some celebrities and it is commonly pushed as a “fat burning pill“. It is also very popular on the bodybuilding scene. The trouble is, it is prohibited in the EU and the USA for just about everything, other than in limited medical and veterinary circumstances. It is possible to obtain it in the EU / USA, much like other illegal drugs can be obtained in very specific circumstances, but for someone who just wants to pop a few pills to help with weight loss, that isn’t going to happen. However, like most things in the modern age, it can easily be obtained on the internet – and the main place to get it is China. Even in China, its general use is illegal – but it still occasionally crops up as a food additive, owing to China’s more lax farming controls.

While with Jonathan Tiernan-Locke I’m still very much undecided, when it comes to Michael Rogers I find myself a lot less supportive. Rogers left Team Sky just as their anti-doping charter was drawn up and he had refused to sign it. He left swiftly and joined a lesser team, Saxo-Tinkoff. Rogers is also known to have visited Michele Ferrari, Lance Armstrong’s now infamous doctor who was at the centre of the world’s biggest ever doping scandal, back in 2005 and 2006. I read Tyler Hamilton’s book, The Secret Race, and am left in no doubt that people only went to see Ferrari because they wanted performance-enhancing drugs. He is utterly discredited. As such, for me, there is too much smoke around Michael Rogers to give him the benefit of the doubt unconditionally. His argument around contaminated food may have some merit, but consider that even the Chinese national team banned their own athletes from eating Chinese meat ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games so that they wouldn’t run the risk of ingesting any Clenbuterol. The same argument was used by Alberto Contador back in 2012 and it didn’t work then. UCI rules also make it absolutely clear (s.21, p.6) that it is the rider’s responsibility to control exactly what goes into their bodies. It beggars belief that in a country notorious for food contamination that teams – especially a WorldTour team like Saxo-Tinkoff – wouldn’t be aware of that.

What will ultimately decide the fate of Rogers and Reyne is the quantity of Clenbuterol in their systems, and this is the great unknown right now until proper hearings are held. Both Rogers and Reyne have tested positive for the substance in a China, where it is notoriously added to food to “bulk up” livestock. It is also the country where it is easier to get hold of than anywhere else in the world. Coincidence? We shall soon see.

I don’t usually follow individual cases on this blog, but given my support and love of Team Sky, I have been following Jonathan Tiernan-Locke’s case with considerable interest – not least because I remember how well he did at the Tour of Britain 2012 and how pleased I was when Sky snapped him up. JTL stood out in that competition as a class act. I’d never heard of him before that, but it was obvious he was destined for the big time.

Now he has been charged with a doping offence, my confidence is rattled a little. I find myself trying not to judge or rush to conclusions; no evidence has been made public yet and JTL is entitled to defend himself. Yet, given JTL’s circumstances – his medical history, the step up in class, a new regime – there are many reasons why his form could have suddenly fallen off when he joined Sky. I hope he’s innocent, but something is nagging at me. The UCI are going to be very sensitive to doping at the moment and I just can’t help but think they would make such an allegation unless they had cast-iron evidence.

Given Michael Rogers’ positive test in the last few days (another ex Team Sky rider), I really hope the team doesn’t get dragged into this as a whole. I believe them when they say they “race and win clean”. Let’s hope that faith isn’t misplaced.

In one of the most epic cycling challenges I’ve ever seen, Rob Holden decided to see if it was possible to take a Boris Bike from a docking station in London, drive all the way down to the south of France, ride up to the top of Mont Ventoux, and get his bike back to the dock within 24 hours so as to avoid a penalty charge. This was all done for Macmillan Cancer Support – a truly worthy cause.

While it hasn’t yet got to traditional freezing temperatures just yet, my riding lately has taken a dent owing to a cold I caught last weekend. I know it’s not impossible to ride with a little dose of the flu, but I feel so drained, bunged up and sorry for myself, for once I just can’t bring myself to go out on my bike. Day Nurse is just about the only thing making me feel human at the moment.

Edit: I managed to get out on my bike for a short ride to the station this evening after posting this, just as the heavens opened. Now I’m soaking wet and snuffling. Cycling isn’t always good for your health!!

It’s that time of year again where it’s now getting decidedly freezing every time I step out of the house, and motivation to cycle goes down accordingly. Evans Cycles have been pushing their indoor turbo trainers hard and I have to say that I’m sorely tempted – not just to maintain fitness in the winter months, but also to give me an opportunity to hit the pedals in an evening when I’m at home and can’t be bothered to go out.

I’ve never used a Turbo Trainer before, but they look quite straightforward. Maybe Mrs Tubby will let me have one for Christmas?

This is an article where I definitely have a foot in both camps. Following the recent high number of fatal collisions involving cyclists in London, the Met has launched Operation Safeway – a massive deployment of uniformed officers across several high-risk junctions, aimed at kerbing both poor driving and poor cycling. Today, there are 650 of them out and about. If all 32 boroughs are taking part, that’s a significant amount of their deployable officers on any one shift. There will be supplements of traffic officers, I expect, but they’re a fairly small branch themselves.

The trouble with these operations is that they’re short term – a reaction to a headline. Unless the Met can keep 650 officers on this operation every day, forever, then it won’t do a great deal. It is, in itself, another headline to react to the headline. I agree that “something must be done”, but there is only so much that the police can actually do. With all the million-and-one other responsibilities that officers have, there is little time to devote to traffic matters. A penalty notice for a traffic offence can take as long to issue and deal with (especially if it’s contested) as a Burglary. Unfortunately, both are priorities – and there aren’t enough staff to go around dealing with it all as much as we’d like.

I hope some good comes from Op Safeway; maybe the advice given out will save a few lives, and maybe a few dangerous vehicles and drivers will be taken off the road. But in order to be successful in the long-term, the Mayor’s office are going to have to come up with a better solution – segregated lanes, dedicated cycle expressways, restrictions on HGVs – whatever it may be. Hoping that drivers and cyclists will all suddenly get “better” at driving or riding won’t do.

Paying for an extra 650 police officers to do this permanently would cost about £25m in wages alone each year, so I doubt MOPAC are up for that, either.

In the last 10 days, 6 cyclists have been killed on London’s roads. This is, perhaps, the highest number ever seen in the city in such a short period of time.

Without knowing the facts behind each individual case, it is impossible for me to comment in any informative way about these deaths. I see the arguments from all sides, since I am a car driver, a cyclist and a police officer. I’ve been in car accidents where I’ve hit another vehicle, I’ve been hit by other vehicles in my car, and I’ve been knocked off my bicycle by a car. I’ve attended dozens more RTC’s in my career, some fatal, some not.

Any road death is an absolute tragedy. Nobody sets out on the roads intending to kill anyone else. All too often, loved ones set out on a routine journey and they don’t make it to the other end. This happened to the fiance of one of my workmates, who now works in road death investigation, but she still lives with the consequences of a coach driver’s momentary inattentiveness to this day. 5 years later and it still haunts her. All too often, people get a sense of road rage, whether borne of frustration, annoyance at being late or held up – whatever the cause, the consequence is the same.

I read the news over at Road.CC and despair at some of the comments made. In many cycling forums, whenever a cyclist is killed, it is usually assumed that the cyclist is wholly innocent and that the car/bus/lorry driver must be at fault. I do not believe that is the case. These forums, where people are so blinkered that they cannot possibly conceive that a cyclist can do anything wrong, are not helping the cause to make roads safer. I have seen bad car driving, but I have also seen a metric fucktonne of bad cycling. Almost every day, I get people cycle at me while I cross at a green light. Almost every day, I get someone take a shortcut on the pavement around me as I walk.

Until cyclists take some responsibility en masse, nobody will listen to our concerns seriously. The counter-argument to cyclists’ demands for improved road safety measures is, “You don’t use the ones that are there anyway”. That means you need to ride in cycle lanes, where provided, stop at red lights and walk your bike if you want to go on the pavement. Don’t charge at pedestrians when they’re crossing. Don’t undertake vehicles that are turning. Don’t ride in blind spots and make sudden swerving manouevres. Ride sensibly.

No ride is so urgent that you should play with your life. Sensible riding is the only way to improve safety and get the added measures we all so desperately want. At the moment, nobody’s listening, and the righteous thunder of the Road.CC forums aren’t helping.

This weekend, I was up in Manchester for the Cycling World Cup. If you’ve never been to a velodrome, it’s well worth making the trip – very easy to get to and Virgin Trains do some great deals to Manchester; my travel only cost me a whopping £12.50 all the way from London.

I was particularly pleased with the picture above, which was shot on my iPhone, showing the GB Men’s Team Pursuit squad on their way to winning a gold medal. And I just about managed to get a shot of my favourite cyclist, Laura Trott, after she won gold in the women’s event: